The Domino Effect of Mountainfilm

THE MOMENT: Dr. Rick Hodes works with Ethiopian children who suffer from tuberculosis of the spine, a condition that leads to severe deformation and, potentially, death. His, and the children’s, moving and uplifting story is told in Making the Crooked Straight, which played at Mountainfilm in 2009. Deeply touched by Dr. Hodes’s selfless humanitarianism, the Mountainfilm judges award his medical program a $5,000 Moving Mountains Prize at the festival.

THE RESULT: One of the young patients Dr. Hodes is able to help with the Mountainfilm award money is Mieraf, an 11 year-old whose spinal curvature has become progressively worse since birth. Her armpit and her hip have become so close together that her lungs are compressed and her breathing has decreased by 30 percent. Mieraf tells Dr. Hodes that she wants to become a scoliosis specialist when she grows up. She tells him of her plans with such passion and sincerity that a visiting photographer has to put down his camera to wipe his tears. Mieraf is now in Ghana for surgery to permanently correct her condition. She hopes to volunteer at the mission where Dr. Hodes sees patients upon her return home.

THE MOMENT: Sylvia Johnson is a young filmmaker who was granted a fellowship in Brazil to chronicle the lives of poor kids who lived in slums in Brazil. Mountainfilm is one of the first film festivals to accept her short film, Alagados, which profiles Renato, an ex-criminal who chooses to defy the stereotype and engage in the active development of his own identity. A photography series called The Alagados Project, which puts cameras into the hands of some of Brazil’s most underprivileged and challenged young people, is part of the Gallery Walk.

THE RESULT: Sylvia’s film and the work of the Alagados Project inspire a MF sponsor to commit $60,000 to the effort, giving the non-profit an enormous financial boost. The Alagados donation, says Johnson, will “put three kids through college and give them a real shot to work their way out of poverty.”

THE MOMENT: Mountainfilm spotlights the appalling yet surprisingly unknown issue of modern day slavery. There is a photography exhibit by Nat Geo Photographer Jodi Cobb, several documentaries and a panel discussion, which is built around author Ben Skinner’s book, A Crime So Monstrous. Ben was the center of a panel that included Bill Nathan, a freed slave from Haiti, Maria Suarez, a freed slave from Florida, and Malauna Steele, an anti-slavery activist from the non-profit Free the Slaves.

THE RESULT: All of the programming on the horrific scope of contemporary slavery motivates a MF sponsor to contribute $135,000 to Free The Slaves. The same sponsor also pledges to build a new school in Haiti where MF guest and former slave Bill Nathan was enslaved and where slavery conditions are rife. Ben Skinner says, “the abolitionist football was moved further downfield by Mountainfilm than it had in a long time.”

THE MOMENT: 2008 Gallery Walk artist, Chris Jordan, who uses photographic images to convert hard statistics and cold facts into dazzling and provocative art, attends a modern day slavery panel at the festival. Among the panelists is Ben Skinner, whose book “A Crime So Monstrous” is a searing expose of the brutal violence, and threat of violence, that today keeps 27 million people enslaved.

THE RESULT: Chris is moved to begin work on a new photographic piece – a huge image of 50,000 fingerprints, illustrating the estimated number of people living under slavery conditions in the US – re-portraying a grafitti-style painting by a Chicano artist from Denver of hollow faces surrounded by tangled barbed wire. “It is a really amazing painting, haunting and frightening,” says Chris. “and should make for a good effect when the viewer walks up close and sees all the fingerprints and reads what they depict.” Chris is dedicating 100% of future proceeds from print sales of this piece to Free the Slaves, the leading anti-slavery organization in the U.S..

THE MOMENT: Dr. Daniel Nocera joins the Mountainfilm 2007 Moving Mountains Symposium on Energy to discuss the most pre-eminent sustainable and renewable carbon-neutral energy source - sunlight. Nocera addresses the largest Symposium audience ever with a presentation centered around the fact that within our lifetimes energy consumption will increase two-fold, and that the additional energy we will need is simply not attainable from nuclear, biomass, wind, geothermal or hydroelectric technologies.

THE RESULT: In a town that has historically fought to maintain it's victorian charm rather than address the current energy crisis, a local Telluridian seeks to reduce his property's average consumption of fossil-fuel-generated energy down to zero by installing solar panels in his home. Although this type of system (with both photo and voltaic panels for production and solar condensing tubes to make hot water) had never before been approved within town limits, his application to put solar panels on the roof passes! In his argument for the energy conversion, the man states, "This project is not being done for financial reasons". He cited Dr. Nocera's presentation at Mountainfilm as motivation for the change. Installation began on Ocotber 16, 2007. Now, for every visitor into the town of Telluride, there will be a visual manifestation of Telluride's commitment to renewable energy.

THE MOMENT: The filmmaking team of “Darius Goes West: The Roll of his Life” desperately wanted to get in touch with Oprah Winfrey, hoping that an appearance on her show would dramatically raise awareness of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), the number one genetic killer of children worldwide. During their packed house post-screening Q&A, they handed out pre-addressed postcards to Oprah and asked the audience to fill them out and forward on their behalf.

THE RESULT: An independent filmmaker in the audience, who had previously worked closely with Oprah, refused to forward the card. Instead, he gave the team her direct phone number. Then a major Hollywood director, after making a generous financial donation to the fight against DMD, invited the team, including Darius and his mother, to an all-expenses-paid visit to Beverly Hills and to the premiere of his latest film. The team accepted the invitation and took advantage of the exposure they were afforded while in Hollywood to push closer to the goal of eradicating DMD.

THE MOMENT: Canadian filmmaker Richard Fitoussi screens his powerful depiction of former Khmer Rouge orphan soldier Aki Ra, a man who has devoted his life to clearing the landmines that he and his fellow soldiers had planted throughout the Cambodian countryside. Not far from Angkor Wat, a major tourist destination (and much to the dismay of the Cambodian government, which would rather forget its country’s past), Aki has set up a makeshift landmine museum. In closing, Fitoussi appeals for funds so that Aki may continue his valuable work.

THE RESULT: An audience member asks “how much?” Fitoussi responds: “$85,000.” The man promises a check is on the way. That money is now in Cambodia, a Landmine Museum has been created, and the donation has even funded a prosthetic-limb clinic behind the open-air museum.

THE MOMENT: Ophthalmologist and mountaineer Geoff Tabin and his Nepalese colleague, Sanduk Riat, present a program about restoring sight for hundreds of Himalayan villagers.

THE RESULT: An audience member is moved to join Tabin and Riat on their next vision quest. Impressed by the effective high-tech, low-cost work practiced by the Himalayan Cataract Project, the man finances a grant that has raised $350,000. That gift is building a hospital that will continue the work and save sight for tens of thousands more.

THE MOMENT: On the lawn between films, Galen Rowell and Rick Ridgeway discuss their excitement to explore “the most remote region ever experienced” by legendary George Schaller. Caught up in Schaller’s vision, the two form a team that includes Conrad Anker and Jimmy Chin and, within a year, set off on foot into the uninhabited Chang Tang plateau of Tibet.

THE RESULT: Having gathered indisputable documentation where none existed before, the group persuades the government of China to preserve hundreds of thousands of acres as a new national park that will protect the birthing grounds of the rare and endangered Tibetan antelope, the chirru. In 2004, the team presented their 275-mile, unsupported journey’s film, in memory of Galen.

THE MOMENT: Harvard-trained ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin presents a film about the pharmacological wonders of the Amazon, The Shaman's Apprentice, finishing with the all-too-known statistics about thousands of acres lost within days, endangering the livelihood of indigenous peoples.

THE RESULT: An audience member antes up the dollars necessary to save a swath of the forest, permitting a culture to evolve at its natural pace.